Product Description: "The most valuable team player in sports" shows you what "teamwork" really means
What does it take to be a real team player, especially in a society that glorifies selfishness and a corporate culture that often uses "team player" as a buzzword but rewards only the showboaters and prima donnas? Well, You Can Observe a Lot by Watching. In this happy and hilarious guide to teamwork, sportsmanship, and winning, Yogi Berra draws on the timeless wisdom handed down by example from ballplayers who came before him to inspire you to make the right choices and become not only a better team player--at sports, at work, and in life--but a better person.
Filled with colorful stories from his life and career, not to mention the down-to-earth wit and insight that Yogi fans love, You Can Observe a Lot by Watching shows you how to make a bad team good and a good team great.
Light, Enjoyable Read This will never enter the pantheon of great books, but it is a fun enjoyable read. When growing up in Ireland and before I ever became a humorous keynote business speaker and motivational humorist, I thought the humorous references attributed to Yogi Berra actually related to that well known inhabitant of Jellystone National Park - Yogi Bear. Hey, baseball meant as much to us as cricket means to most US residents.
The subtitle `What I've learned about Teamwork from the Yankees and Life' is the primary rationale for the book. The material is pretty basic, lacking depth, mainly because Berra appears to see the good in everyone or at least is not prepared to rip on too many people. Lessons mentioned in the book include Find your Role, Making Everyone Better, Respect your Team and Not Over Till It's Over. All the lessons are supported by hagiographic examples and references to his almost universally wonderful Yankee team mates.
One of the surprising things about the book is its general lack of humor. My favorite lesson in the book refers to an exchange Yogi had with baseball legend Joe DiMaggio who seeing the author down on himself during a game shouted, "Get running, Yogi, start running. Always run out to your position, it doesn't look good otherwise. Can't get down on yourself. Can't let the other team think they got down on you." One good lesson per book makes a book worthwhile. A pleasant light read.
Not Much Berra Baseball Here. To like this book, you gotta' really like Yogi Berra a lot...or never heard of him. This is an unusual one. Why would this famed, long-time catcher for the powerhouse New York Yankees, come up with a dime-store-psychologist's book about teams, team practice, team play, teammates, teamwork, "teamness," team ego, team unity? He's played on or managed several major league baseball teams, so nobody disputes he's learned something about it along the way. -But what makes Berra so skilled in "teamwork" beyond all others who could have easily written the same kind of feeble book as this one?
Spot the book's cover, and you see vintage Yogi, all smiley...and holding a (National League yet!) baseball. You quickly figure this book's going to be about Berra's brand of baseball: inside the game, the outside, the players, the stories, what's bad about today's baseball, what's good. But no! He's mostly held his tongue and delivered Baseball Lite.... Now, I don't want to be too hard on him, but Yogi tells us about a myriad of "team" players and managers who, over the years, learned "playing as a team" probably as well as Berra ever did. Was he some kind of standout "teamer"? -Never noticed.
Amid all the "team" clutter, gone are the sharp Berra witticisms, Berra game insight, and his unchecked (sometimes convoluted) commentary that we've come to know and love. -And expect. He settled, instead, for a washed-out book about "team unity." Indeed, the inside skinny on childhood-hero teamwork is not quite what most baseball fans long for.
It's not exactly a sports book, although the setting is clearly baseball. So, it's an easy-reader, but Yogi's overdone it with his mind-numbing, over-use of the word "team" [and all its possible variants!]...along with his never-ending reminders of how wonderful it is to play as a team. Ok already! It's like preaching that rain falls downward -over and over again....
We know! Baseball "teams" win. -Not exactly unheard of. Then maybe this is some kind of motivational business book; but if it is, any veteran company CEO could surely have written a better one. Team this. Team that. Team up. Team down. "Team" is everywhere! In the 1st chapter alone [just 27 small pages], entitled "Team Player," Berra uses the word "team" and its variations 118 times. (!) Who was this book written for? -The fan? Say it ain't so, Yogi....
One bright spot, though, is how the book shakes the mind into images of baseball gone by. Casey, Elston Howard, Bobby Murcer, Phil Rizutto, Mickey and Roger, Joe DiMaggio, Charlie Grimm, Gene Mauch, Gil McDougald, Gil Hodges, Bobby Bonds, Clete Boyer, Don Larsen, ... just a handful of the dozens and dozens of big-name, former players and managers mentioned throughout the book. Only Berra does none of these guys or their stories justice, as he recounts lean anecdotes about each of them (and their "teamplay," of course!) in all-too-brief one, two, or at most, three-lines of memories.
-An easy, friendly, non-compelling read that's wide of the plate. -as told to Dave Kaplan? ...for Mr. Berra didn't pen much of this smoothly-written, non-baseball baseball book all by himself. Even the title borders on a counterfeit Yogi-ism, surely thought up by someone else. All in all, his writing "team" should have instead come up with "Yogi Berra's Real Book about Major League Baseball," a classic even CEOs would like.
Yogi again surprise with his insight and real wisdom This book is a little different. It is not filled with Yogi quotes like in the book "I Never said half the things I said" but it does have his typical humor. It is a great book for a Yankee fan like me who followed and watched the great Yankee teams of the 50s and 60s that Yogi played on. The theme of the book is that too many modern players are selfish and that no matter how great an individual player might be it takes team work and unselfishness by the whole team to make a champion. Yogi describes this in players like Mantle, Ford, Reynolds and DiMaggio from his era but he also sees it in guys like Paul O'Neill and Scott Brosius from the 1998 Yankees, perhaps the best baseball team ever! I wasn't expecting it but Yogi also saw it in the 2004 Red Sox and pointed to an unselfish act by Tim Wakefield that he thought was the key to their comeback against the Yankees. It was not something that many fans or broadcasters would have noticed but Terry Francona and his Red Sox teammates did.
This is true Yogi! We need to have every young ballplayer read, and hopefully understand the message that Yogi is passing on based on his years of experience! Team work is as important now as it was back "in the day" and the young individuals of today need to understand that.
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